Review: King Rat

Set in Changi prison during the tail-end of WWII, George Segal is American Cpl. King, an enterprising sort who uses bribery and theft to control not just the other men in and around his rank, but also the higher-ups, and even starts conning his Japanese captors, too. Cpl. King’s chief antagonist is Lt. Grey (Tom Courtenay), a rigid British officer from a working class background, who makes futile attempts to enforce military law inside the prison camp. Unfortunately for Lt. Grey, it’s useless because even the top brass in camp (played by Sir John Mills, Leonard Rossiter and Denholm Elliott) are reluctant to do anything about ‘King Rat’. James Fox plays the posh-sounding Marlowe, whose ability to speak Malay sees him as quite valuable to Cpl. King, who has a new racket in mind involving ‘rat meat’. Patrick O’Neal plays one of the other American POWs and King’s right-hand man.

 

Having written the screenplay to the wonderfully entertaining POW film “The Great Escape”, James Clavell turned his attention to Changi in Singapore to write King Rat. Writer-director Bryan Forbes (“Whistle Down the Wind”, “Séance on a Wet Afternoon”, “The Stepford Wives”) brought the novel to the screen for this 1965 adaptation, and it couldn’t be a more different depiction of WWII POW life than “The Great Escape”. Instead of ‘The Cooler King’ and the likeable James Garner as ‘The Scrounger’, we have a smug, spineless George Segal as the ultimate opportunist living it pretty easy and clean amidst his poor, dishevelled, ailing, and starving fellow POWs. The Japanese might be the ‘enemy’ here, but this ‘King Rat’ is a real piece of work. The interesting thing is the one guy who can see this slimy, self-serving POS for his true self…is completely unlikeable too. Possibly more so, actually. In a role turned down by Paul Newman and Steve McQueen, George Segal is pitch-perfect as Cpl. King. I think the other two actors would’ve been a little too cold and unlikeable. Don’t get me wrong, Cpl. King is a cynical, self-serving jerk at heart. But he still needs to have that surface-level charm and ability to schmooze people, and I don’t think Newman (superior actor he was) or McQueen (magnetic movie star as he was) would’ve been right for that particular aspect of the character in the way that Segal very much is. I don’t think Segal has ever bested this performance, the normally fairly lightweight performer acts out of his skin here. What’s especially good about Segal here is that King’s relationship with James Fox’s Marlowe is rather complex and somewhat inscrutable. Yes, King is to some degree clearly using Marlowe, just as he uses everyone for self-serving purposes. Is he also a true friend, though? It could still be both. One or two scenes towards the end suggest Cpl. King was a mere user, but Segal is just unreadable enough to keep you unsure and make you wonder if it’s a little bit more complicated than King just being a self-serving prick to everyone and everything. Then again, some won’t see King as a bad guy at all, merely a capitalist doing what he can to survive like everyone else is, and managing to work the system to his own advantage. It depends on your own perspective and personal belief system to some extent, I suppose.

 

As played by an excellent Tom Courtenay, the seemingly incorruptible Lieutenant Grey may ultimately be a strict adherer to military rule, but he’s humourless, rigid, and just as smug as Segal’s Cpl. King. You just can’t warm to Lt. Grey, because he doesn’t seem to get that strictly enforcing military rules and regulations within the confines of a prison camp is an entirely pointless and unnecessary exercise. He’s gonna drive himself batty doing that, much like Sir Alec Guinness in “Bridge on the River Kwai”. Everyone else in the camp can’t stand the rigid taskmaster with a chip on his shoulder. After Lt. Grey finds the officer in charge of food rations (a Lieutenant-Colonel well-played by Gerald Sim) has been stealing, he takes the matter to Sir John Mills as Col. Smedley-Taylor (a virtual ‘guest star’ role, really). Unfortunately for Lt. Grey, all the Colonel does is try to get Lt. Grey to see sense and just lighten the hell up for a change. Then the evidence seems to disappear and Lt. Grey finally becomes silent on the matter. The officers higher ranked than Lt. Grey (who is working class, unlike many of the other officers) are no better than Cpl. King, and there isn’t a damn thing Lt. Grey can do about it.

 

With Cpl. King, Lt. Grey, and the top brass all being varying degrees of slime, it’s left almost entirely to James Fox and James Donald to give us sympathetic characters at all. Donald is the film’s link to “The Great Escape” and “Bridge on the River Kwai”, here playing the camp’s doctor. It’s not a very large role, but the underrated Donald is an underrated performer and solidly portrays one of the few decent, humane characters in the film. Fox’s upper-class officer Marlowe gets taken under the wing of American Cpl. King, and comes to see him as a true friend. King uses Marlowe for his knowledge of the local dialect, and finds the Brit’s disinterest in money to be practically unheard of. It’s in his best interest to buddy up with Marlowe, whether there’s more to it than that, is up to the viewer to decide, as I mentioned earlier. Marlowe still considers Cpl. King a friend by the conclusion, reacting negatively to the spiteful needling by Courtenay’s Lt. Grey (and pointing out that hating Cpl. King gives Lt. Grey a reason to live, quite astutely).  My own take? I think it’s quite likely that King has been using and schmoozing people for so long that by the time he gets to Marlowe he’s probably convinced himself that he really is Marlowe’s friend. And perhaps there is a real bond there, Marlowe is the only one of King’s men who refuses any bribes and questions any gifts or favours, and yet the deeply cynical King appears to enjoy having him around for some reason, and even divulges a personal detail or two to Marlowe. Is it just that he speaks Malay? Whatever the nature of their bond, make no mistake though…it’s #1 first for ‘King Rat’ at the end of the day. There’s a reason why his clothes are always clean and those of even his flunkies are in far worse condition. It’s good to be the king, as he ends up being the most important man in the camp despite his rank (King being of a working-class background back in the States, unlike most of the upper-class British officers). ***** SPOILERALERT ***** All reigns end however, and the end of the war sees Cpl. King having to get back to the reality of his standing in society…and the look on George Segal’s face at the end is absolutely priceless. Everyone’s happy except Cpl. King. All his hard work climbing his way up the social ladder in camp for nothing. Now he’s going to be back to where he started. King in-name-only. Also priceless is the preceding scene with a paratrooper played by Richard Dawson, who is aghast at the fact that King is neatly dressed and relatively healthy-looking, whilst the rest of the men – officers and grunts alike – are looking like emaciated vampires. What a slimy bastard King is. ***** END SPOILER *****

 

The film is full of terrific (mostly British) character actors, all giving solid work in roles of varying size. Denholm Elliott, Gerald Sim, and Sir John Mills do especially well as some of the corrupt officers. Geoffrey Bayldon has a memorable cameo as an expert on animals, whilst Aussie character actor Reg Lye plays the token Aussie in the camp. Forbes deserves credit for creating a completely believable view of Changi prison camp life, you can practically smell the sweat, this certainly is no “Great Escape” or “Hogan’s Heroes”, as everyone save Cpl. King is pretty much wasting away in stinking hot prison hell. Just look at the scene where King fries an egg for Marlowe, who quickly feels the guilt as the sound of the egg frying is driving all of the other starving POWs crazy. It’s actually disgusting. Surprisingly shot in America, the stark B&W cinematography by Burnett Guffey (“From Here to Eternity”, “The Birdman of Alcatraz”, “Bonnie and Clyde”) is outstanding, and earned an Oscar nomination. It’s a very unpleasant movie, but for me a very strong and rewarding one. If there’s any flaw, it’s that there’s probably a few too many characters for Forbes to juggle and effectively flesh out. You’d like more time with Mills, Sim, and Elliott in particular. However, that’s a minor carp here, and the film is already two hours long as it is.

 

An excellent, extremely underrated (if unpleasant) view of WWII Changi prison life where prisoners do whatever they can just to survive – some with more cunning, ruthlessness, and success than others. This isn’t your typical glossy, sanitised treatment of POW life, pretty much everyone’s a bit dirty and depraved here.

 

Rating: B+